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Canada got the last hurrah at the Celebration of Light Saturday evening, closing the three-night event with a winning display. Canada was declared the winner of the event, with Brazil and China finishing second and third, respectively.

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People criticizing the federal Conservatives for doling out $3 billion in increased contributions to parents with younger children perhaps feel they have good reason for their cynicism. With an election looming, the cheques — expected to begin arriving in the mail on Monday — are certain to be welcomed by their recipients.

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The Simon Fraser University academic who first proposed tax-free savings accounts - an innovative retirement tax shelter that has been embraced by the federal Conservatives - doesn't like what the government has done with his idea.

As unstoppable global economic forces continue to widen the gap between gross incomes of the rich and the poor here and everywhere else, the Canadian policies that most effectively moderate after-tax disparity have been eroded over the last couple of decades. The root of growing inequality is by no means all bad, as is noted by Chrystia Freeland, a former journalist and now a Liberal MP who has written extensively on the subject.

Federal Finance Minister Joe Oliver has changed his mind and will consider opening the Canada Pension Plan to extra voluntary contributions because, he says, it gives Canadians more options to save for old age. That is good, as far as it goes.

Re: Threat to privacy greater than terrorism, professor says, March 26
Passage of the heavily-criticized, lightly-amended Bill C-51 is a foregone conclusion in spite of widespread opposition among legal analysts, the Canadian Bar Association, academics, civil liberties associations, the government’s Privacy Commissioner, and the general public.

Re: Disaster in Nepal, April 27
Coming just months after the B.C. government announced a decision to prolong the B.C. school seismic upgrade program, pushing it back 10 years to 2030 from 2020, we witness a devastating earthquake in Nepal.

OTTAWA — Justin Trudeau’s Liberals, struggling during a polarizing debate between the Conservatives and NDP on war and national security, are launching a pre-election advertising campaign Wednesday aimed at getting Canadians to think about the economy.

Don’t expect much in the way of nuance from Generation Screwed, a new book about how government policies crafted to suit baby boomers are sticking it to today’s youngsters, the millennial generation. For Vancouver-born author Candice Malcolm, the problem is simple to state: spending is out of control, debt is astronomical and bloated governments have committed to continued and crippling drains on public finances without heed to future generations.

Prominent B.C. economist J. Rhys Kesselman is horrified by the Frankenstein’s monster that has evolved from a tax policy idea he advanced in 2001. Kesselman, in a paper he co-wrote with Finn Poschmann of the C.D. Howe Institute, proposed a form of tax-free savings that was aimed particularly at encouraging low-income Canadians to save for retirement.

British Columbians — with average life spans of 80 years for men and 84 for women — live a full year longer than folks in the rest of the country. Apparently manyt of us need the extra time. A new analysis from Vancity finds many British Columbians, especially those living in Metro Vancouver or Victoria, will likely need more than just one extra year to build a nest egg big enough for a comfortable retirement.

It is hard to refute the conclusion of a new Fraser Institute study looking at the long-touted idea of government providing a guaranteed annual income to all Canadians — that it isn’t in the cards. The study chronicles a litany of challenges both in how to design a guaranteed annual income program and how to implement it.

Imagine receiving a credit card bill that totalled $243,476. This would no doubt be a shock for most Canadians. But if you add up all the liabilities of every Canadian government — federal, provincial, and local — that is in fact how much each taxpayer would owe of the $4.1 trillion total in direct debt and unfunded liabilities.

It is truly disturbing to think that we live in a society where elderly women are deemed invisible, disrespected and even abused by their children and grandchildren, rather than being respected, honoured and cherished. But beyond the finding that physical, emotional and economic abuse is more common that anyone would like to believe, there is little surprising in the recently released report Your Words Are Worth Something.

When the premiers convene this week in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont., for their Council of the Federation summer meeting, there are three compelling reasons why they should call on the federal government to join them in addressing poverty which increasingly touches the lives of all Canadians.

To hear financial advisers tell it, you should start planning your retirement the second you start to receive lunch money. Failing that, fresh out of high school will do, but anything after university and you face collecting food stamps to pay for ramen noodles in your sunset years. And that — not planning for the future far enough in advance — is just one big retirement mistake people make. We talked with Mark Marlow, investment adviser at TD Waterhouse, and Heather Rivers, a manager of financial planning at Vancity, about other mistakes made on the way to a well-upholstered rocking chair.

Kudos to the B.C. Egg Marketing Board for labelling Wednesday's made-for-media event in down-town Vancouver - the unveiling of a life-size fire truck made from, of all odd things, egg cartons - as an exercise in "eggonomics."